Bronx bus riders are about to get a short stretch of relief.
The Department of Transportation shared this week that it will be moving ahead next year with a proposed busway on a traffic-clogged piece of East Tremont Avenue where buses move slower than five miles per hour at some times of the day.
In a presentation given to the Municipal Services Committee of Bronx Community Board 5 on Monday, the DOT said that it will be installing a two-way busway on East Tremont Avenue between Third Avenue and Southern Boulevard next spring. The 0.6-mile busway will only allow trucks and buses to use the entire stretch, while car drivers will need to leave the street at the first available turn.
Car drivers will be allowed to access the block from the streets to the north and south of Tremont, and they will also be allowed to park on the block.
The area of East Tremont Avenue where the busway will go in is a commercial stretch with one auto lane going east and another going west, and a painted bike lane on each side of the street. The DOT chose this area for the busway because the agency said the street geometry worked best for it, and previous presentations from the agency showed that on weekday afternoons bus speeds between Third Avenue and Southern Boulevard sag to under five miles per hour.
The city presented plans to do something about those bus speeds in May, and initially proposed the busway in June. Elected officials and Bronx Community Board 6 asked the DOT to do more business outreach over the summer, and after doing so, the agency decided to stick with the busway.
DOT staffers visited every business on Tremont between University Avenue and the Bronx River Parkway, asking if owners preferred a busway that allowed parking or an offset bus lane (one that is not placed directly on the curb). Because of the layout of East Tremont Avenue, an offset lane would mean the removal of curbside parking in order to still allow car drivers to access Tremont between Third Avenue and Southern Boulevard.
According to DOT, 33 percent of business owners felt positive about a busway that didn't remove parking, with 32 percent feeling negative about it and 35 percent with neutral feelings. But 55 percent of business owners had negative feelings about an offset bus lane, 26 percent had positive feelings and 19 percent were neutral.
The DOT also asked both shoppers, business owners and store employees how they got to work, and found that the vast majority of shoppers in the area did not drive there. The agency also said that its surveys found many more store employees took transit or walked to work than business owners, who were much more likely to drive to work.
With that feedback in mind, the DOT stuck with the busway proposal that it had rolled out in June of this year [PDF]. The agency will also include an eastbound offset bus lane between Webster Avenue and Third Avenue in order to give buses a good runway to the busway.
In its previous presentations on the project, the city said it was also exploring bus lanes between Anthony Avenue and Third Avenue to the west of the busway, and between the Bronx River Parkway and Southern Boulevard to the east of the busway, but only the Webster Avenue to Third Avenue bus lane made the cut. Because so much of Tremont Avenue is laid out as one travel lane and one curbside parking lane, introducing an offset bus lane would eliminate all of the curbside parking, which the DOT said it did not want to do.
Even small busways manage to speed up buses. The Jay Street busway in Downtown Brooklyn is 0.8 miles long, but bus speeds improved by 20 percent since the project went in in 2020, even with spotty enforcement of placard abuse on the stretch.
The Bx36, which travels the length of Tremont Avenue, is the fifth-busiest bus in the Bronx, carrying 34,000 riders per day according to the DOT.
Even without the additional bus lanes on Tremont, those bus riders in the area will still get some badly needed help. The DOT previously shared that the majority of people using Tremont Avenue, 57 percent of people traveling on the street, use the bus to get around.
In addition, 72 percent of the households on or near Tremont Avenue don't have access to a private vehicle, 78 percent of neighborhood residents get to work via public transit, walking or cycling and the median household income is just $31,000 per year, well below the citywide median income of $77,000 per year
It's unclear how Council Member Oswald Feliz, who represents the area where the busway will be installed, but opposed a similar proposal for Fordham Road, will respond. But the project should at least make Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson happy, as the Boogie Down beep called for improved bus service during an October press conference to mark the release of a draft vision plan for capping the Cross Bronx Expressway.
"We need better buses to move across our borough from east to west," Gibson told the assembled press last month.
The news that East Tremont would get a busway next year gets Mayor Adams's 2025 off to a better start than his previous failed — and possibly illegal — effort to construct bus lanes. This year, according to numbers crunched by Streetsblog, the DOT will put in fewer than six miles of protected or dedicated bus lanes, which is just 20 percent of the 30 miles the city is required to install under the Streets Plan.
It's the third year in a row that Mayor Adams has ignored those requirements.
